The kiss of death: Bitcoin, BitMEX and Manipulation

Anthony Pompliano, founder and partner of Morgan Creek Digital Assets, and Travis Kling, founder and CIO of Ikigai Asset Management, held an in-depth discussion on the state of the Bitcoin ecosystem. The interview explains why Kling believes BitMEX is the deathblow for Bitcoin & Co. and what quantum crime is all about. Anthony Pompliano and Travis Kling talk about the Bitcoin ecosystem. About manipulation, Jenga and quantum crime.

Disclaimer: The following text consists of excerpts from a podcast translated from English. They reflect the views of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the author or BTC-ECHO. First, the two talk about the leverage of BitMEX and how large fish use it to exclude small piers.

Bitcoin, BitMEX and the Kiss of Death

Travis Kling (T): You can now go long and short at Ripple, Tron, Bitcoin Cash, EOS and Cardano. And this with up to 20-fold leverage for some of them, 50-fold for others. And quantitatively, a listing on BitMEX has been the kiss of death so far.

Anthony Pompliano (P): What do you think this is doing to the market?

T: What it has achieved so far is that you can now get prices in two ways.

P: Because before you could only go long.

The worst kind of liquidity

T: Well, you could shorten on BitMEX, but there wasn’t enough liquidity. And now there is just a lot of liquidity on BitMEX […]. Apart from that – and I’m glad you mentioned that – it’s the worst kind of liquidity.

P: Why?

T: That’s at the heart of it. There are extremely big investors, Wall Street guys, like –

P: Like your old world.

T Yes, yes, yes. Not explicitly Point 72, but –

P: That kind of people.

T: Like this kind of people, right. The best in the industry in quantitative terms. I don’t want to name names. One of them rhymes with “lump”. The other rhymes with “BE raw”. So these guys do a liquidity modeling on BitMEX. And the way it works, they contact the network three times a second. […]. And then – I’m not one hundred percent sure how they do it – they can see exactly at which point which prices come about. In relation to the specific volume at the moment and in relation to the bid ask. I think they can take advantage of the leverage used for that specific trade at that particular moment three times per second.

P: Wow.

T: And then they can find out where the stops are. And then they can find out where the stops are accumulating.